Mobile devices, mobile applications and mobile communication in general have become an ever-present part of the personal and business lifestyle in the past decade. However, many mobile applications—such as the increasingly popular “apps” on today's smartphones—typically rely on a consistent network connectivity, for example, in order to stream videos.
Despite considerable expenditures by telecommunications providers in recent years, which are reflected in high financial investments into cellular infrastructure, the coverage of mobile networks is still far from being perfect. Poor reception, complete loss of connectivity or a reduced bandwidth are known problems, for example, when traveling by train, visiting remote areas or visiting highly frequented locations such as conferences or trade fairs. Alternative networks are already available in many situations and can be utilized to maintain at least a certain functionality for mobile applications.
These days, an application must often provide its own transport capacity requirements by selecting and implementing the suitable network access points, for example by using and parametrizing a respective socket interface. In addition, each requirement that goes beyond pure transport, such as handling of a connection loss or a general adaptation of transmitted contents with regard to available network quality, must be handled individually by each application. Current research in the future internet field, which also includes this topic, is divided into two main directions that concentrate on the network level and on the application level.
On the network level, the first steps towards an adaption of transport capabilities have focused on the collection of runtime micro protocols based on an application request to improve the flexibility in transport layer protocols. Examples have been described under the subject heading “Dynamic Configuration of Protocols”, DaCaPo for example in M. Vogt, T. Plagemann, B. Plattner T. Walter, “A runtime environment for da capo,” in Proceedings of INET93 International Networking Conference of the Internet Society, 1993, and under the subject heading “Function Based Communication Subsystem, FCSS” for example in B. Stiller, “Fukss: Ein funktionsbasiertes Kommunikationssubsystem zur flexiblen Konfiguration von Kommunikationsprotokollen,” [A function-based communication subsystem for the flexible configuration of communication protocols] GI/ITG Fachgruppe Kommunikation and Verteilte Systeme, 1994. Later, the emphasis shifted to general network functionality such as the “role-based architecture”, RBA that is not based on layers or to “service integration control and optimization”, SILO consisting of reusable building blocks that can be combined into a network protocol. Regarding RBA reference is made to R. Braden, T. Faber, M. Handley, “From protocol stack to protocol heap: role based architecture,” SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev., vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 17-22, 2003, and regarding SILO to R. Dutta, G. Rouskas, I. Baldine, A. Bragg, D. Stevenson, “The silo architecture for services integration, control, and optimization for the future internet,” in Communications, 2007. ICC '07. IEEE International Conference on Communications, June 2007, pp. 1899-1904. More recent projects work on the “Network Functional Composition” to define application-oriented protocols that utilize available network capabilities, such as “Automatic Network Architecture”, ANA, “Service Oriented Network Architecture”, SONATE), or “Netlet-based Node Architecture”, NENA). Further information regarding these projects can be found, for example, in “Autonomic Network Architecture (ANA)”, accessible online at: http://www.ana-project.org, B. Reuther, P. Muller, “Future Internet Architecture—A Service Oriented Approach” in it—Information Technology, Vol. 50, no. 6, 2008, Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich, or D. Martin, L. Völker, M. Zitterbart, “A Flexible Framework for Future Internet Design, Assessment, and Operation”, Computer Networks, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 910-918, Mar. 2011. A more detailed description of the above projects and of some other ones has been published in C. Henke, A. Siddiqui, R. Khondoker, “Network functional composition: State of the art” in ATNAC'10: Proceedings of Australasian Telecommunication Networks and Application Conference, IEEE, 2010.
At the application level, research on the future internet is directed toward intelligent infrastructures and business processes, i.e., elevated intelligence and efficiency through tighter integration with internet networking and computer capacities. In this respect, reference is made, for example, to “Digital Agenda for Europe, Future Internet PPP” (accessible online at https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/future-internet-public-private-partnership). This approach comprises intelligent mechanisms for content adaption with regard to the current context, for example by using an error-tolerant video codec for a conference call when the access network is prone to errors. The FI-WARE project, which is described, for example, in “Future Internet Core Platform” (accessible online at http://www.future-interneteu/home/future-internet-ppp/fi-ware.html), introduces a novel infrastructure for the cost-efficient generation and distribution of services, provision of high quality services and security guarantees in order to meet the requirements of important market stakeholders across many different segments such as health, telecommunication or environmental services.
The adaption of either network or application capabilities requires recurring awareness of requirements and conditions of the other part. Network monitoring at the application level is implemented through approaches such as RTCP feedback (e.g., via a frame loss). Based on this feedback, real-time applications such as video conferencing applications adjust the video codec used or the codec parameters. However, it is possible that such a mechanism is not sufficient to establish why the uncovered problem occurred (e.g., overload, erroneous components, etc.) and how to respond in a suitable manner. On the other hand, application signatures within the network are recognized via mechanisms of the deep packet Inspection (DPI). Although these make it possible to separate the types of applications, they cannot provide information about the application context. The existing mechanisms allow the application and network to access information about the other part but allow only for coarse responses due to the lacking knowledge about context, capabilities and exact monitoring values.